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August 15, 2005
What Did I Mean by Cheat? Clarification to "The Cheaters' Guide to LinkedIn"
What Did I Really Mean by the Term “Cheat”?
A number of people have commented on my use of the word “Cheat”. It makes some people uncomfortable to even read the post. It makes some readers feel as if they are somehow engaging in some surreptitious act by just reading a post so titled.
Although it does make the post a bit more memorable from a pure marketing point of view — by conjuring up the image of some pseudo-controversy over a list of items that would more acurately be called “Best Practices” — I actually had something else in mind entirely when I originally chose the term to use in the title.
“Cheater” or “Trickster” is most commonly defined as — a dishonest person who uses clever means to cheat others out of something of value.
“To Cheat” is most commonly defined as — to deprive of something valuable by the use of deceit or fraud.
“Deceit” or “Fraud” is most commonly defined as — an intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right
Okay, so technically Cheat isn’t even the right term to use according to the dictionary. But I have noticed that children use the word “Cheat” in a context which means nearly the opposite. Kids often download, from various internet sites they frequent, something they call “Cheat Codes”. “Cheat Codes” are codes which, when entered into their various XBoxes, Nintendos, PS2s, Gameboys, or GameCubes, unleash incremental value — not take it away. These codes add features and capabilities to their existing inventories of computer games. These so-called “Cheat Codes” actually unleash power and make their games much more useful to them — basically, extending the useful life of their existing inventory of games.
So, when I originally used the term “Cheat” in the Cheaters’ Guide to LinkedIn, I was using the term cheat in this “unleash new powers and incremental value” sense of the word which kids mean when they use the term “Cheat Codes” — not in the more common “taking of value” sense of the word “Cheat”.
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Posted by cmayaud at 03:23 PM | Permalink| Comments (2)
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Comments
Ahhhhh... Thank you for teaching us old foggies a new word (sense).
Or were you simply trying to see which of us has kids?
Or, maybe you were thinking of "value" in terms of the anti-IP open source crowd for whom "value" is shared rather than owned.
-- Jack Krupansky
Posted by: Jack Krupansky at August 15, 2005 07:12 PM
Christian,
I think it's unfortunate that some people feel that you need to clarify your use of the word Cheat....I guess it should have been titled "How to get extreme value from LinkedIn". You're guide has helped me immensely so in my case I'll simply say THANK YOU for putting it together and allow you to call it anything you desire.
-chris
Posted by: Hanburger at August 16, 2005 08:28 AM
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